The present invention relates to improvements in winemaking apparatus and more particularly to apparatus for fermentation of wine.
Generally, in making red wine, grapes are crushed to provide a suspension of heavy parts (chiefly seeds) and light parts (pulp and skins) in grape juice. This suspension is called must. Thereafter, the must is placed into a fermentation tank so that the grape sugars found in the must can be converted to ethanol, either by the addition of specific strains of yeast, or naturally with wild yeast found on grape skins.
During this process, carbon dioxide is produced, which causes a separation of the juice downward and the lighter products, which float to form a cap on top of the fermentation vessel.
The cap contains naturally produced chemicals that are necessary for good wine quality, and they can be recovered by remixing the cap with the underlying juice. Traditional methods of remixing include pumping the juice from the bottom of the fermentation tank to the top of the tank and spraying the cap with the juice, which extracts the necessary chemicals into the juice. This known process has disadvantages in that there is not good recovery of the necessary cap chemicals due to lack of uniformity in cap spraying. Also, the current pumpover devices often become clogged with pulp, skins and seeds and thus become ineffective.
The present invention advantageously addresses the above and other needs.
The present invention advantageously addresses the needs above as well as other needs by providing an improved sprinkler unit for a fermenting system.
In one embodiment, the invention can be characterized as a sprinkler for a fermenting system comprising a nozzle having an inlet opening and an outlet opening with a support arm having a first end attached to the nozzle. The support arm is shaped in a fashion to position a second end of the support arm substantially centered below the outlet opening of the nozzle. A plurality of vanes form a vane structure which is rotatably attached to the second end of the support arm. The vane structure has an axis of rotation through the center of the outlet opening. The plurality of vanes extend outward and radially from a center of the vane structure; and the support arm is shaped in a fashion to not interfere with rotation of the vane structure. A conically shaped structure is attached to a center of a top planar surface of the vane structure.
In another embodiment, the invention can be characterized as a fermenting system with a recirculating system. The sprinkler unit described above is attached to an upper nozzle of a recirculating pipe coming down from the center of the top of a fermenting tank.